Apparently, he was one of three or four people Putin was still listening to.
Since the others were of similar job description, who knows, maybe now there is nobody Putin will still listen to.
E.g. To his peril, Putin never listen to anybody in his State Department. Lavrov is just a Putin mouthpiece.
He was one of the few who told KGB Putin that they’d take Kiev in 3 days.
Now he’s either in the Gulag or pushing up daisies.